This is the second installment of the "7 Deadly Sins" series of posts. The first post was about sloth, or laziness, and how it truly does not exist. (See link below to read it.) Today will be about envy.
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Envy is a difficult emotion for me. I first started experiencing it when I was in college, studying viola performance. I had a competitive spirit, which made me always want to be "the best." During my freshman year, I felt very confident in my music abilities because I sat at the front of the orchestra. But as time went on, I saw my colleagues flourish and thrive in their musical development. They practiced, they improved, and they started "winning" better seats in orchestra than I did. They learned repertoire faster than I did.
Of course, I was not a shabby musician myself. I certainly belonged at this elite conservatory. But practicing was always difficult. Whereas many of my peers practiced three or more hours a day, I could only clock in at ninety minutes. Practicing was always painful for me. I would stalk the hallways, looking for an available room. Each room was very small, and had no windows. I would take my viola out of its case, place my music on the stand, and commence.
Then things would turn dark. As I played, I would become overwhelmed with an incredible sense of sadness. The more I played, the sadder I became. There is no rational explanation for why I felt this way. The music was a gateway for sadness to attack me. After about an hour, my face would be drenched in tears. Sometimes I played past the tears, they'd drip onto the viola. But most of the time, I would give up. Again and again. I really envied my classmates. I envied how they could practice. How they could "win" the favor of their private teachers. They were able to follow their teachers' instructions and perfect their pieces. But me? I couldn't practice enough, so I was rarely prepared for lessons. I felt lazy and stupid.
I started to become bitter. I hated my musician peers. How they were friends with each other, how they socialized at parties. I never knew where the parties were. On the rare occasions that I went (less than ten times in five years), I felt an empty hole in my gut that no amount of chatting could fill. I felt no connection to anyone, because no one experienced the "musical pain" that I did. I rarely went to recitals either. Watching musicians onstage was as painful as practicing. I would immediately envy their ability to play, and I would leave feeling spiteful and bitter.
I developed schizophrenia during the first year of my Masters degree. This caused me to experience voices while practicing. Sometimes they were inspiring, other times they were cruel. These messages from the "spirit world" told me "divine wisdom" about music's "truths." It made sense to no one except me, which wasn't entirely bad at the time. It made me feel special and valuable. Practicing immersed me in a fantasy world of magic, karma and energy. But eventually I cracked, and was hospitalized. I fell hard, and I was forced to leave college mid-degree.
Even now, I struggle with practicing. When I play, I feel like a failure. I feel embarrassed. I feel like I can never live up to playing as well as my former colleagues at conservatory. I see them on Facebook, pursuing doctorates, playing in European orchestras, posing for group photos behind tables of cheese and wine. I can never achieve what they have. I scrape away at my stringed box, trying to hear the answers, trying to hear clues on how I can end up in Europe. But my viola doesn't tell me anything useful. The harder I try to hear the answers, the louder my voices get.
I have replaced my feelings of envy with resignation. In other words, I have "given up." My feelings of envy were the result of trying to reach an unattainable goal. By giving up the dream, I have relieved myself of this pressure. Very often, we are told to follow our dreams. But sometimes, the process of realizing our dreams puts us in a competitive position. A position where we see others vying for our same dream. This puts us in a state of competition. And with competition comes envy.
Bearing this in mind, we realize that envy is nothing to be ashamed of. Rather, it is a normal human condition. Envy enables us to survive. Envy allows us to remain motivated. Envy allows us to process what is around us, and apply it to our own situations. Perhaps I am too abstract. In my experience, I feel attacked by envy. I don't want to feel envious of my peers. But I see what they have, the beauty and joy they feel as musicians. I don't feel this joy, and yet I realize that I am just as deserving as they are to feel it. Yet I don't. Is envy in this situation unjustified?
Is it?
Related Articles:
Sloth: "No Such Thing As Laziness"
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